Thursday 23 December 2010 09.14 EST
First published on Thursday 23 December 2010 09.14 EST

Ed Balls is normally seen as someone who came to power as a protege of Gordon Brown's. Having spent the last few weeks reading the latest Labour memoirs and biographies, I'm beginning to wonder whether it might not be make more sense to view the relationship the other way round.

In their biography, Brown at 10 (which I've written about in more detail here), Anthony Seldon and Guy Lodge describe the Balls-Brown relationship as one that was "far more complex" than one between politician and powerful lieutenant.

In their time at the Treasury together, as their political journeys had developed, they had become increasingly co-dependent. "Ed compensated for Gordon's lack of intellectual confidence by being decisive," says one long-standing colleague. "His all-encompassing certainty became a crutch for Brown in his own intellectual and psychological insecurities." In the bitter atmosphere of the Blair years, that had led to a dangerous, spiralling dynamic. Brown "contracted out to Balls his evaluation of people", says one Treasury official, and Balls thought [Tony] Blair little better than an imbecile. In those difficult years while Brown waited desperately for power, Balls had protected him from attacks, and Brown remained deeply grateful.

There are plenty of anecdotes in the book illustrating Balls's influence over Brown and one of the most telling relates to the moment when Brown became prime minister. Brown agonised about whether to make Balls chancellor, but was worried about antagonising the Blairites. Balls then planted a story in the Daily Mail saying he would not be getting the job. Brown was cross. But Balls told Seldon and Lodge: "I decided to do so to make the decision easier for him."

It would be easy to dismiss the notion that Balls was the key decision-maker in the Balls-Brown relationship if the assertion just came from unnamed sources in a book. But what gives the idea more credence is that fact that it seems to have been shared by Tony Blair himself. Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff, said so in his own book, The New Machiavelli: How to Wield Power in the Modern World.

When confronted by a difficult decision, [Brown] would commission more advice, ask for more research and play for ever more time. The inability to take a decision seemed also to infect his immediate circle, with the exception of Ed Balls. Tony told me in 2000 that in his opinion Ed was running the Treasury rather than Gordon. Gordon was like that. He liked to have people decide for him. Tony had played a similar role when they worked together in opposition. Ed's judgment may have been flawed, but at least he could reach a decision rather than putting it off indefinitely.

(Incidentally, I would recommend the Powell book highly. He starts it by saying: "Let me first be clear what this book is not. It is not another memoir of the Blair years." Too right. It is not just another memoir of the period, it is about the best, because Powell was powerful enough to know exactly what was going on, but also not burdened with a rampaging ego, which means that he can write about it all reasonably objectively. It's a fascinating book even if, by writing about Blair through the prism of Machiavelli, Powell has managed to cunningly disguise it as a rather dull one.)